From: Ian Goddard (igoddard@erols.com)
Date: Sun Oct 27 1996 - 09:23:48 MST
At 06:12 AM 10/27/96 -0500, James Daugherty wrote:
>> I can remember a little of my early childhood, and it feels rather alien
>> to me. I can at least recognize some of the traits of my current self in
>> my memories from five years and forward, but the earliest fragments
>> belong to a very different kind of being. No doubt I will say the same
>> thing in a thousand years too about this era...
>
> I can remember much of my childhood quite clearly and have a
> strong sense of continuity of self from then 'til now.
IAN: I'm not sure exactly how this ties in but, having fairly
extensive lucid dream experience -- where, while asleep you
"wake up" in your dream to realize, "Like woh, I'm dreaming, gee,
this is cool" -- up to the point of willful lucid state induction,
I've observed the amazing phenomenon that one can, in the sleeping
dream state, have a set of memories that even upon careful review
appear to be 100% accurate and true to your non asleep life, yet
upon waking are seen to in fact have been 100% false.
In short: the mind is able to instantly fabricate a rich and
complex field of memories that are totally false, yet cannot
be detected by the observer whose apparatus of detection is
irrevocably tied to that fabricating brain.
In one lucid dream, I was in a room and decided to inspect as
much of the dream, its structure and nature, as possible. Looking
out through the sliding glass door on to a sun drenched backyard
with swing set, I recalled my childhood growing up there. I "saw"
and "felt" in my memory years of existence there, irrevocably
interwoven with "who I am." However, upon waking up, I saw that it
was false, that it had no correlation with Ian's life or childhood.
Never the less, while I was "awake" in the dream, giving it my
best critical examination -- what is this object made of, look
at that TV, let's inspect its physical caricaturists, I'll write
something down on this dreamland pad of paper, hay, the letters
I just wrote are changing before my eyes -- knowing what I was
seeing was a dream, and thus was a false world, I was still 100%
duped into falling for the reality of a false set of memories due
to the fact that I had and WAS a mind full of fabricated memories
(in a way, an illusion cannot detect itself to be an illusion). The
"truth" of the memories was as "true" as can be. I even thought at
the time, "Clearly, while I'm in a dream, a false world, and some
features, such as the changing letters I just wrote, prove
it is a dream, the memories of my life are accurate."
But they were not.
Some might speculate that I was having a "past life memory." I can't
disprove that claim. I can only say it seems equally plausible that,
just as the mind can instantly fabricate a "physical universe" in the
dream state, that appears amazing real, it can also fabricate a mind
connected to that universe with false memories just as easily.
Of course, logically, this must draw into question the
reality of any mental phenomena, opennng the door to the
ideation that everyting is a dream, or less to 100% true.
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IAN GODDARD <igoddard@erols.com> Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y
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VISIT Ian Goddard's Universe -----> http://www.erols.com/igoddard
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